Mindfulness Embodied Living: Integrate your life to Achieve Wholeness

Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. We feel more alive. We also gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation and healing.Jon Kabat-Zinn

Mindfulness and mindful living can help make the real difference in our lives. Much is made of mindfulness, both for and against its effectiveness and relevance to modern life. Typically its genius and simplicity is not well communicated. Essentially, mindfulness is just about bringing awareness to the present moment, 24/7 so that we live our lives with such chosen awareness and do not become the victims of our negative/‘mindless’ thinking. Such an easy concept, yet so hard to live up to, consistently.

We tend not to appreciate just how much we are run by our minds and just how pervasive and controlling it can be in our lives and so, how we suffer as a result. The quote, credited to Einstein, that ‘the fish will be the last to discover water’ seems apposite. When we start to practise bringing awareness to our past conditioning and present moment experience it is typically very liberating and empowering. We can start to come home to our true self in embodied ways and connect with that inherent wisdom that we all have, rather than remaining the victim of a mind that has been shaped by so many external forces and factors that are not who we really are. There is significant scientific evidence to show the effectiveness of mindful living in addressing a wide range of mind and body-related issues.

Mindfulness is not, of course psychotherapy, but, in my view, is an essential oil to lubricate that process. Mindful living helps us to stay in balance in mind and body which is vital for healthy living. I have a passion to help people to achieve this as part of the psychotherapeutic process. ​Embracing mindfulness and mindful living has had a significant impact on how I relate to myself, others and life in general. It's a wonderful panacea, but also requires consistent application; as an investment it has huge net value. Like the best things in life it's also free! ​Mindfulness and mindful living refers to the practice of attending to present moment internal experience without judgment or trying to change anything. We mostly don’t realise how much of our lives we’re living on ‘autoplilot’, when the mind goes wandering off into thoughts about the past or future and generally getting hooked into all sorts of concerns, which can undermine how we feel about ourselves. The mind further tricks us into giving credibility to these figments of our imagination. Mindfulness allows us to see through these illusions by using our awareness to bring us back to the reality of the present moment - the only time that matters, as we can never actually live in the past or the future.

Some 80% of our thoughts are repetitions of previous thoughts that we’ve had, sometimes thousands of times before. The mind can be like a stuck record or perhaps a puppy that can’t sit still. The mind typically jumps wildly from the past to the future with hardly any awareness of where you are right now? We can’t control the past or the future, so the only well-being available is in the present moment, cultivating acceptance of “what is” right now.

Mindfulness entails noticing the patterns of our thoughts and the associated habits that result, which show up in our daily lives, which can keep us trapped our suffering; it clarifies how we organise our experience and deal with life in the ways that we do. It’s really helpful to see that the brain loves to default to such short-cut habits, but of course these may no longer be serving us well if they ever did.

Thus, once we become aware of how our thoughts are guiding us, such new-found awareness can help us to choose different responses or behaviours, instead of being trapped by such habits. Having that choice can open up our relationship with people and things and develop our curiosity and confidence in everyday encounters. A greater awareness and understanding of how we relate to ourselves, others and the environment can enable us to live more fully and in harmony with the way things are.

As we develop our mindfulness skills we come into a way of being that helps us to be fully present with our experience. As we are a ‘joined-up’ mind and body organism, mindfulness should not be approached just as a cerebral exercise; it is essentially a mind and body approach to connecting with our inner wisdom, the source of our authenticity. Thus, mindfulness enables us to notice what’s happening in the inner landscape of sensations, feelings and thoughts. So it’s important to ‘ go inside’ and connect at an embodied level - ie in order to feel our feelings - which are entirely related to both our conscious and unconscious mind. Many of our problems generally stem from ignoring such embodied feedback as we alternatively invest in the ego-driven mind.

Mindfulness based therapy places greater emphasis upon being present with our emotions as they are felt in our body - our “felt sense”. We need to open to the fullness of our experience rather than moving too quickly towards cognitive understanding and the finding of meaning. This is more about 'being with' rather than more doing. Learning to listen and stay with what our body feels in a spacious and kindly way.

We know from neuroscience that whatever we focus upon leads to brain growth and that as we let go of things our attachment to diminishes. Thus, ‘if we water the flowers and starve the weeds, we will have a beautiful garden’. Developing this ability enables us to be present with our self in a different way, typically we become less afraid of emotions that have previously scared us, such as depression and anxiety, and less afraid of the world around us. Mindfulness gives us access to a much greater spectrum of experience by reducing our need to avoid and hide from our mental and emotional life. Mindfulness is excellent for a very wide range of symptoms, including anxiety, depression, ADD/ADHD, insomnia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and overall loss of energy and passion.

Developing Mindfulness & Mindful Living:

Choose a quiet moment, perhaps when getting into your car or resting at home. Sitting or lying down in a relaxed balanced position, follow a few deep breaths into your belly, then make some audible sighs out to release tension and observe. Feel the bottoms of your feet grounded, your lower body heavy and connected to ground, your back body relaxing into the support of your seat. Scan your body slowly upward, breathing into any areas of tension or numbness. Simply practice watching each sensation, feeling or thought pass by. If you find yourself hooked into a story, worry or memory, gently come back to observing your breath. You may be doing that every few seconds at first, but that’s OK. Remember, no judgment. Mindful living!

Naming what’s happening, such as stomach relaxing or feeling worried or thinking “planning” thoughts. Then releasing each, allowing space for the next experience to arrive. Not trying to change anything! Just noticing and naming. There is no right or wrong. Simply being aware and curious in the moment for whatever arises for you, all on its own.

We need to bring this enhanced awareness into our daily lives to make it part of who we are; developing a daily mindfulness meditation practice may become an important resource that is deeply beneficial.

It’s really beneficial for mind and body when we combine breathing exercises with mindful meditation and, in particular through the movements of yoga, when we engage the body. The mind is eased into a calmer, more reflective, state that brings proven relief from stress, depression and anxiety.

Paying attention to the presence of an issue in our lives rather than turning away from it helps to develop a relationship with the problem, which increases a feeling of effectiveness and the possibility that a problem can change.

In these ways Mindfulness helps to develop skills that can support us in functioning and feeling better. These skills also help people to move through the subtle processes that lead to an exploration of core beliefs that interfere with achieving an authentic existence.

Mindfulness Benefits:

The long-term benefits of developing a mindful way of being are considerable; it doesn’t come easily and requires disciplined practice.

By being mindful we can catch our self in the moment going along well worn tracks that we now know do not serve us well and consciously choose to do something different.

Mindfulness provides a way to introduce more acceptance and kindness into our life, a way to be less at war with who we are and where we are - which is paradoxically the best place from which to change.

Mindfulness- based approaches are effective in reducing anxiety and depression, helping us to become more interpersonally effective, and in reducing the impact of stress. A different relationship towards our thoughts, emotions, behaviours and sensations helps to move the brain towards new, preferred patterns.

It turns out that witnessing our internal experience without judgment is calming to the brain! And the more we practice it, the more our brain likes it and wants it. It quiets the chatter all on its own and becomes peaceful. That sense of well-being soon becomes a new way of being inside yourself.

Mindfulness, as a way of being, is now recognised as a most effective and deeply satisfying approach to achieving balanced self-regulation in life.

What ever depth we take mindfulness to it remains an invaluable way to be present with the fullness of who we are in a calm and kindly way.

Mindfulness is a key to healthy, happy living. I practice it daily and it has changed my life!

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